saw Nick’s shoulders go rigid. “Wait a minute,” he said firmly. “You just left? An adult didn’t drive you here?”
“It’s not that big a deal, Daddy. The school’s only two blocks away.”
“I’m afraid leaving school without permission is a big deal, Steph. You know I’m going to have to call the school and talk to the principal again, don’t you?” Gently easing the marker from her fingers, he rounded her chair and pulled it back from the desk.
That was when Erin noticed the wheelchair. She stared, trying valiantly to curb the resulting shock.
“You know you’re not allowed to leave school without permission,” Nick said, picking up the phone and punching in numbers. “Why didn’t you tell your teacher you wanted to go home? Why didn’t you call me?”
In some small corner of her mind, Erin heard him ask for the principal. She stood frozen in place, telling herself the sight of the wheelchair hadn’t upset her, hadn’t made her remember.
Images from the night of the shooting burst forth in her mind’s eye. She fought the flashback, but it pressed down on her, a solid weight of fear that stole her concentration and threatened her control. Danny lying on the floor in a pool of blood. The churning in her gut. The smell of gunpowder.
The folded uniform she’d been clutching slipped from her hands and fell to the floor in a heap. Nick looked up, his eyes narrowing. Terrified he would misinterpret her reaction, Erin quickly scooped up the fallen uniform, then backed into the relative safety of the hall. Her chest felt as if it was being squeezed by a giant vise, but she forced air into her lungs. She was going to be okay, she assured herself. It had been a while since she’d had a flashback, but they still came on occasion. Whenever a sound or smell or sight reminded her of the night she’d been shot, it all came rushing back….
Ordering herself to calm down, she smoothed the front of her uniform and watched Nick kneel to tie his daughter’s shoe. The little girl wore a pink sweatshirt and matching pants, with polka-dot sneakers. It was a happy outfit, made for climbing trees and playing hopscotch. But Erin could plainly see by the look in this child’s eyes that she wasn’t happy. She certainly wasn’t going to get up out of that wheelchair and play hopscotch anytime soon.
“Get your books and markers together, kiddo,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“It’s either school or home,” he said firmly. “I’ll let you choose.”
“Please, Daddy, I want to go with you.”
Erin didn’t miss the pain that knifed across Nick’s features. Jaw clenched, he looked down at the floor, then slowly straightened, as if the effort cost him more energy than he had to spare. “Put your books and markers in your book bag, honeybunch. I’ll take you home.”
Huffing in displeasure, the little girl wheeled closer to the desk and started throwing markers one by one into her book bag.
Erin hadn’t even known Nick Ryan had a family. He didn’t wear a ring; she’d assumed he was unmarried. That his child was handicapped struck a chord within her. Pain broke open in her chest—a slow ache that burgeoned until it enveloped her entire body. And her heart silently wept when she remembered another wheelchair, and a man she’d sentenced to the kind of hell she could only imagine in her worst nightmares.
“McNeal.”
She started at the sound of Nick’s voice, and forced her gaze to his.
Standing at the end of the hall, he shot her a look cold enough to freeze acid. “In my office.”
Pressing her hand against her stomach, she walked past him and into his office. Oh, Lord, she hadn’t intended to react to the wheelchair. She couldn’t imagine what he must think of her.
Nick entered behind her and closed the door. When he turned to her, his eyes were the color of a force five tornado that was headed straight in her direction.
“If the wheelchair bothers you I suggest you go back to Chicago and forget you ever set foot in Logan Falls,” he snapped.
“It doesn’t—”
“You look like you just saw a ghost. I can’t have you falling apart every time you see my daughter, for crying out loud.”
Erin stared at him, heart pounding wildly, while the words built in her chest like a sickness. “I’m sorry. I was…distracted—”
“You were about to come apart at the seams,” he interrupted.
“I was…thinking—”
“Thinking?”
“I was thinking about…Danny,” she said, knowing it would be professional suicide to tell him about the flashbacks or the nightmares.
“What does he have to do with this?”
When she trusted her voice not to betray her, she raised her chin and met Nick’s gaze. “He’s in a wheelchair. I’m the one who put him there.”
Because he had an eight-year-old daughter, Nick didn’t usually curse, but today he made an exception. Of all the explanations Erin could have offered, the bit about her ex-partner knocked him speechless as effectively as a set of brass knuckles.
He was accustomed to negative reactions to his daughter’s wheelchair. Some people stared. Others ignored her. Some people just smiled too much because they were uncomfortable with the prospect of a child who couldn’t walk. No matter how innocent, those reactions invariably upset Stephanie—and set his own temper ablaze. He would never forget the day she’d come home from school crying so hard she couldn’t speak. His heart had broken into a thousand pieces when she’d told him the kids had made fun of her. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d wished it was him in that wheelchair instead of her.
He wasn’t sure why, but he’d expected Erin to be different. She was a decorated cop. She’d seen a lot over the years. He’d hoped she’d be somehow above it. Then she’d hit him with that bit about her partner, and he’d realized her reaction didn’t have anything to do with a lack of character, but with her own private hell.
Damn, he didn’t want to have to deal with this.
“It was wrong of me not to tell you I’m still…dealing with what happened to Danny,” she said.
“Frank didn’t bother,” he said dryly. “Why should you?”
“Frank doesn’t hold me responsible. It’s not an issue for him.”
“He didn’t clean up your file, did he?”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“Internal Affairs cleared you?”
She looked at him as if she were about to walk the plank—and he was the one holding the gun at her back. “Yes.”
Nick didn’t like the way this was playing out. It was clear this woman had been exonerated by the department. The problem was she hadn’t yet
